


Indignant

by Madtom_Publius



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bad Parenting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 22:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6628348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madtom_Publius/pseuds/Madtom_Publius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Alexander began making a new life for himself in America, his father wasted away in the West Indies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indignant

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr by publius-esquire

After he received notice that his wife was dead, James Hamilton considered whether or not he should pack up and return to St. Croix to see if he could get away with any of the family’s possessions before the courts gave it all away to Lavien, as well as to pick up his boys. It only took him a few minutes and a good hard drink to realize that there had never been anything worth smuggling away in the first place. And besides, Jem and Alec were practically men now. No use whisking them away again from another home. They’d be fine with Rachel’s relatives. He had his own problems to account for. 

His friend Simple assured him that this time the plan would work. Bequia was full of cheap land, an unmistakable deal where he’d never have to pay a farthing for four years to till his crops. Then he’d make enough to move to a bigger island, finally start a plantation, make back his money and return to Scotland with his head held high. 

Sometimes in the years that followed he thought about Rachel. On the nights he was sober he recalled her charms, missed the feeling of her touch. Events should not have transpired as they had. But it wasn’t his fault she couldn’t keep her hands off of other men. He’d been warned by his brother John about the dangers of West Indian women. Whores, all of them. And she had so often nagged him about his business prospects, never appreciated just how difficult it was to make ends meet in a hell hole like the Caribbean. She had never been grateful for all of the sacrifices he’d made, everything he’d given up for their family.

Maybe he should find himself another wife, Hamilton thought. But no women of good repute dared consider him while he was picking the lint in his pockets for change whenever a bill came due. That was fine, he resolved. He would just find another wife when he returned to Scotland. Until then, there was no shortage of intimate company to be found on those islands. 

Jem located his address first, and his letters were quite to the point (good James, his oldest boy, always the pragmatic thinker): he needed money, and wanted his father’s assistance. But St. Thomas was too far away. And where on Earth could he find the capital to fend off his son’s creditors, when he was sunk so deep himself he’d never see the light of day again? “Marry well, James,” he had written, and that was all the fatherly advice he had to give. It was years after the fact that he’d learned how Jem died penniless and single.

Alexander, though, little Alec had figured it out. Smart lad. Hamilton could hardly believe when he’d received the letter begging him to come to America, to see the young woman (of such a respectable family) he’d chosen to marry. He’d considered it. It had been so long since he’d intermingled with the best of society, the type of people he’d been bred to associate with. And the Schuylers seemed to be just that. But mulling over his whiskey, he’d remembered just how much Alec looked like that Stevens boy, and he’d felt a resurgence of indignity. Besides, he thought. The war made the waters unsafe to travel. And he was getting older than he cared to realize, no matter how much he ignored his grey hairs. It was no time to be sailing across the world.

His creditors never cut him slack. It was an outrage. Didn’t they know who he was? He was the son of Alexander Hamilton, Laird of Grange. With aristocratic disdain, James said he was worth more than all of the people in that tavern combined. Hamilton had one day had enough of the hounding, slammed his tankard down and threatened the collector to meet him on the field of honor for slighting him, like he was some common deadbeat. Never mind that he’d once worked the thankless job of collections earlier. The rabble he’d allowed to call themselves his friends had pleaded with the creditor to not take him seriously, that the island had created a fever in his brain that made him mad. But he wasn’t mad. Everyone else who could possibly stand living in such paltry conditions on some godforsaken speck were the fools. 

Finally he pieced it together. Alexander had pleaded in his filial duty in his letters, and the damn serpents of avarice were never going to leave him alone, so James figured he might as well make both happy. If there was once a time he would have felt shame from asking his son for money, it had long past. After all, it was expected of boys to take care of their fathers. He’d taught Alec the Code of Honor, the ways of the gentleman, and now he was reaping his reward for his parental affections. 

It wasn’t enough to keep his plans in Bequia from falling through, though. The slaves had upraised and rebelled, and it was time to go. Years of his life spent on that land, and now all he had to show for it was a busted leg hurt during the scrimmages. It was of no consequence, Hamilton tried to assure himself. The work was beneath him anyways. 

Any common man might have thought he’d just given up the moment he landed on St. Vincent. He could see how they’d think so. In his mind, he could easily justify spending what money he’d received from his son drowning his sorrows at the local tavern, while at the same time patronizing baser-born men for wasting their funds when they could be out making actual lives for themselves. He was simply in a tight spot was all. 

That was all well and good until the day his friend Ashburner had to pull him from a drunken stupor out of the mud and plop him pathetically in a chair to sober up in front of all the other customers. At that point, it was hard to convince himself he’d ever grown up in splendor, come from a good family, had once been someone special. He missed his brothers. He missed his mother. What he wouldn’t give to see Scotland again.

The men never stopped ribbing him after that. The world was becoming more republican, they said, it was about time more aristocrats got their faces in the dirt and tasted what real work felt like. He didn’t have to sit there and take that from them. If only he could give them all a good whack with his cane. “Laugh if you will, you despicable rascals,” he’d spat, downing the rest of the drink in his tankard. “Talk to me about republicanism, my boy’s the right hand man to President Washington. None of you will ever amount to that.”

One of the men laughed. And it burned worse than the whiskey going down his throat. “Then why ain’t you there in those United States, James?”

“And miss the pleasure of all your company?” he snapped, sarcasm dripping from every word to hide the fact he had no real answer to give. He simply slapped more money on the table and asked the bartender’s wife for another pint.


End file.
